I almost wrote something positive about AI yesterday… I’d just signed up with a new provider and one of their offerings was an AI website builder.
So, thinking it might be fun I tried it.
I gave it a fairly basic prompt and hey presto! A rather nice looking site.
I thought “that was good… lets start again and give it some colour preferences this time”. Guess what? It spat out exactly the same site again ignoring all my prompts to change the colours etc.
Even after 3 attempts it completely ignored my colour preferences.
And that is the reality of AI. While it has great potential, in most implementations its just an un-polished token gesture, a turd on the pavement of time wasted.
So… how much can we really expect from the current generation of AI?
As with most new technologies the hype far exceeds the reality. Its resource overheads are staggering and the returns are mediocre at best.
For creative writing and image generation it can be pure genius, just as long as you know you’re not actually using someone else’s work or intellectual property. On which note it’s important to say:
BE CAREFUL!
There are already legal battles being fought by content creators on the grounds many AI have ingested content, for example open source software or artwork, without considering the licensing agreement.
Claiming “An AI made me do it” is for now at least, no a defence in a court of law.
When it comes to facts and figures don’t waste your time.
Don’t get me wrong, AI is brilliant at the things it can do well. The issue is, it’s even better at giving a very convincing answer that is completely wrong.
Is Chat GPT a Weapon?
I know this sounds daft but Chat GPT appears to deliberately give either incorrect answers or very inefficient ones. If I ask a code related question it will almost always come back with the most complicated answer properly.
The only thing it seems good for theses days is wasting time and confirming I was right when it makes a mistake.
If only DeepSeek hadn’t tried to read the contents of my clipboard when I first opened it.